Young Phillip Maddison (41 page)

“Oh go away, go away, do! She may die, poor Grannie,” wept Mavis.

Phillip was silenced. Slowly he realised what had happened. The others began to cry again. He wondered what to say. Their crying made him feel nothing. “I’m going to see for myself.”

“But you mustn’t, Phil, Mother said so, she asked me to tell you especially. Gran’pa is very very worried. Would you like your dinner now? It’s laid in the sitting room.”

“What is it? Oh, cold mutton again.”

“The potatoes are in the pot, on the gas. Mrs. Feeney’s here, having her lunch in the kitchen. She’ll give you yours.”

Mavis gave him a look, meaning that she wanted to speak to him outside. In the sitting room, behind the shut door, she told Phillip what had led up to the stroke. Aunt Flo had tried to kill herself. That was the beginning of it all.

“Kill herself? Good Lord! Whatever for?”

“Well, it started with a quarrel about Kimberley with Uncle Charley.”

“But why? What has Kimberley got to do with it?”

“Don’t you know? It’s awful!”

“What’s awful? Come on, tell me, quick!”

“I thought you knew! Uncle Charley is his father!”

“But how can he be, when Kimberley is black all over? He’d be a half-caste if he were.”

“Well, you see, first sons always take after their mother. You do, you’re a Turney, like Mum.”

“I’m not a Turney! I’m a Maddison! Anyhow, Tommy is Uncle Charley’s first son.”

“Yes, and he takes after Aunt Flo’s people, who are Dutch.”

“That’s why he stole my eggs, then. But look, Mavis, Kimberley doesn’t take after either of them. I don’t believe it, you’re making it up!”

“I’m not, honestly. I heard Aunt Flo say so. It was after that she tried to commit suicide.”

“It all seems double Dutch to me.”

“Well, let me explain, and don’t always interrupt. First there was a row between Aunt Flo and Uncle Charley in Gran’pa’s house. It was over Kimberley. Have you got that? Aunt Flo said his mother was a black harlot. Then she ran out, crying. Before this, before the quarrel, she said to Mum that she wanted to get some spirits of salt to clean a straw hat with. Well, she went to Atkinson’s the chemist, and returning over the Hill by herself, she suddenly screamed and tried to swallow the powder. Mr. Mundy saw her, and took her to Dr. Cave-Browne’s house. He gave her an antidote, then used the stomach pump. Mr. Newman had already seen her on the Hill, and brought the news to Gran’pa and Uncle Charley. Now do you believe me?”

“Good Lord!”

“When Mr. Newman had gone,” went on Mavis, “Uncle and Gran’pa had a frightful quarrel, after Uncle Charley had said to him, ‘I see, my dear Father, that you still retain the habit of trying to suppress your children’s opinions, regardless of their age.’

“Oh Phillip, it was terrible to hear them, shouting at one another. ‘Get out of my sight, get out of my sight this instant, d’ye hear?’ shouted Gran’pa. ‘You’ve been nothing but a grief to me and your Mother all your life! And don’t you dare to come back this time, d’ye hear what I’m saying? I disown you! You’re no son of mine!’ Gran’pa was terribly red in the face, all his veins swelled up. When Uncle Charley went, saying Gran’pa was a devil, Grannie cried a lot. Then, as Gran’pa was shouting at her she fell out of her chair. Isn’t it awful, Phillip?”

Mavis looked tragically at Phillip, who remained calm.

“Don’t you care, Phillip? There’s a nurse with Grannie now, in her bedroom! She may die, oh, poor Gran, poor kind darling Gran!”

“I wonder what caused it all,” remarked Phillip.

“I’ve just told you! Don’t you understand?”

Phillip went to see Mrs. Feeney in the kitchen, where she was eating bread and cheese, her usual quart bottle of porter on the table beside her. It was the charwoman’s whole day at their house.

“I shouldn’t go in next door if I were you, Master Phil. I’ll mash the potatoes for you, and bring them down. Now be a good boy, Master Phil, and do what your Mother asked of you. Keep away, there’s enough people to worry her already. Be a good boy, and do as she asked, Master Phil.”

“I’ll be back in half a mo’, really, Mrs. Feeney. I just want to tell Mother something.”

He was not going to miss anything if he could help it. He went next door, and finding the kitchen empty, tiptoed to the hall, and listened.

There was the sound of voices upstairs. He went, silently in his plimsolls, to the half-open front room door, and peeped round. Gran’pa sat in a chair, staring straight ahead. There was a swelled vein beside his forehead. He could hear him breathing. Unobserved, Phillip withdrew his head.

Next, he crept down to Uncle Hugh’s room. Uncle Hugh was sitting on his bed, supported by his hands flat on the counterpane, his head held down, staring at the carpet. He too was breathing harshly. Phillip tip-toed back.

After hesitation, he went softly up the stairs. He stood in the space of the open door of Gran’pa’s room, the front one. Grannie was in the next room. Her door was half open. He hesitated, riot liking to look round the door.

He went into Gran’pa’s room, feeling the need for space and movement. There was an open roll-top desk there, full of useful things, like pocket diaries which the Firm sent to customers at Christmas, bundles of pencils and boxes of nibs with the firm’s name stamped on them, indiarubbers, envelopes, all colours of blotting paper; there were Gran’pa’s seals, in one small drawer, several watches in another, small spirit flasks, gold cuff-links and studs, and many other interesting nicknacks.

He recalled the time when he had stolen a number of these articles, and Father had found him with them, and caned him. Why had he stolen them, when he had not really wanted them? Was he really a throw-back? What was a throwback? A sort of Darwin monkey?

He decided he would not help himself to anything in the room this time. Like Tommy had, helping himself to his bird’s eggs, the rotter. But if anyone found him there, they would be sure to suspect him. What ought he to do? Slip away over the balcony?

There were subdued voices in Grannie’s room. What was happening? He moved to the door again. Then he heard a cry, and hid behind the door, pressing back against Gran’pa’s bed. Mother ran out—he had never seen her run before—he saw her eyes were shut—her face puckered—her grey hair flying at the temples. She cried out in a low voice, “Oh Hugh, she is gone, she is gone!” and he thought she would fall as she went down the stairs.

Phillip was awed. Going to the other door, he looked round. Grannie’s head lay sideways on the pillow, her mouth slightly open. The nurse was trying to lift her shoulders, as though she might otherwise fall sideways out of bed. She turned and saw him.

“Are you Mrs. Maddison’s little boy?”

“Yes. Is Grannie dead?”

“Yes, dear, she was taken very suddenly, and so has been spared all pain, which is a mercy. I’ll just lay her straight, and put pennies on her eyes, and then I’ll leave her, dear. You ought to go to your Mother now. She will need you.”

Phillip went slowly downstairs. Grannie was dead. It was a strange feeling, as though the house was now slightly altered, somehow. At the bottom of the stairs he stopped, and moved back against the wall, for Uncle Hugh was coming with his sticks up the passage. He struggled up the three stairs, his knees bent at the top, like the Black Widow’s. Shaking a lot, slowly he pushed himself upright; then placing the sticks, one on either side again, he walked to the front room, his boots clopping on the carpet.

Phillip was now four steps up from the bottom of the staircase, sitting down on a stair, to keep hidden. He did not want Uncle to think he had been spying.

Uncle Hugh went into the front room. Phillip did not move.

Uncle Hugh stood just inside the doorway. With shaking hand he lifted up a stick and said, staring in Gran’pa’s direction, in a harsh and trembling voice, “You killed my Mother!”

“Calm yourself, Hughie, sit down my boy,” mumbled Gran’pa thickly. “This is no time to talk like that.”

Uncle Hugh kept the stick pointing at Gran’pa. Uncle Hugh was breathing more harshly than before. His nostrils were wide open.

He said again, “You killed my Mother, with your brutal ways! You injured her head when you knocked her down, when you turned out Charley! She was never again the same woman afterwards!”

Gran’pa said nothing. Phillip could hear him breathing as harshly as Uncle Hugh.

Then Uncle Hugh fell sideways, with a clatter of sticks and boots on the floor. As he sprawled there, crying, Phillip turned and ran swiftly back to the kitchen, and then into his own house, where Mrs. Feeney was holding Mother in her arms. Mother was crying almost silently, and at the sight of her puckered face Phillip cried too, everything that he had always pretended to be, broken down, for the moment.

H
ETTY
thought it would be a good idea to repay some of the hospitality the children had received in the past by giving a little party to their friends in the country. Richard did not care about having parties in the house; besides, Grannie had not long been buried. It would be best to have the picnic away somewhere. Where should they go? To the Crystal Palace? To Reynard’s Common, by train?

It was a hot summer, following the Coronation of King George V and Queen Mary. Later on, Hetty and the children were going to Whitstable in Kent, for a fortnight at the seaside. Meanwhile, where should they have the picnic? Mamma, she thought, would be the first to approve of such a thing, for the sake of the little ones, now that such a thing was made possible by the money Mamma had left her.

The publican of the Randiswell had a painted waggonette, and catered for parties, Mrs. Feeney told her. “The horses are quite safe, ma’am, and I should think unlikely to run away, being more than twenty years old.”

In case there was any doubt, Mrs. Feeney added, the vicar of St. Mary’s always hired the waggonette, for the Mothers’ Meeting outing every year, as well as for the choir treat. Greenwich Park was a favourite place, she said. “Well, I mustn’t stand here, mum, or I’ll never get my work done!” and Mrs. Feeney hurried away with pail, swab, and lump of hearth-stone.

Hetty made enquiries, and learned that the waggonette, to hold twenty, would cost a sovereign to Greenwich Park and back. This sum, without Mamma’s little legacy, would have been impossible, for of the seventy shillings a week Dickie gave her for housekeeping and all the clothes and incidental expenses of the children and herself, she seldom had been able to save more than a
shilling a week—and what she had managed to save in any year had gone in pocket money and extras for the summer holiday.

Now, however, Mamma’s money would enable her to be what she had always wanted to be—independent of Dickie, as regards money for the children’s holidays. He was so very good, almost at times too good, in seldom spending anything on himself. Hetty cherished the idea of buying him a rifle of his own, which she could get, through the Firm, at trade price. The only thing that worried her was how could she find out what was the right kind of rifle? Could she approach the Secretary of the Rifle Club, and seek his advice? Would it be etiquette to ask him to keep her request as a confidence? For she must never for a moment put Dickie in a false light, among the other men. But supposing that part of the matter to be all right, and she bought the rifle, would Dickie perhaps feel hurt that she had gone to someone else for information? And in any case, would it, or could it, make him feel small that she, a woman, albeit his wife, had interfered in matters appertaining to a man’s sphere?

One thing about the rifle Hetty was determined to observe: on no account would she mention the matter to Phillip. There had been enough trouble in the past with firearms, in his connection!

Meanwhile, that could wait. The picnic was the thing.

She outlined the proposed picnic to the little ones, as she still thought of them, after breakfast one morning.

“Now dears, the waggonette can take only twenty, so we must decide beforehand who of your friends, or our friends rather, you would like to invite. First, I think we must ask those who were so kind as to ask you all to their parties last Christmas, don’t you? Very well then, first, I think we should ask the Pyes.”

“Oh lord, not old Pye!” cried Phillip.

“No dear, of course not, naturally. But I think it only polite to ask Mrs. Pye and her two children, dear. After all, they did invite you twice to see their magic lantern, didn’t they?”

“Yes, and the same slides on both occasions.
And
dried-up sandwiches, into the bargain.” But, he thought, the Rolls girls weren’t there the second time.

“You are mean to talk like that,” said Mavis.

“Well, it’s the truth. Old Pye is a fat fool.”

“Hush, Phillip, that is not very kind of you. He cannot help being fat, you know.”

“Then he should take cold tubs. Like Father does, to keep himself in shape.”

“Just look who’s talking. You never do, except in the hottest weather,” rejoined Mavis. “But you are too skinny already, aren’t you?”

“Fool!”

“Everyone’s a fool except Phillip, according to him.”

“Hush, children. If you are going to squabble, I shall not go on with the matter.”

“Well then, tell Mavis to shut her ugly mug in future.”

“Phillip! If only you could hear and see yourself sometimes!”

“I can, that’s the trouble. I know very well I look horribly ugly.”

Hetty could not help laughing. Phillip had a sense of humour which often redeemed his bickerings with his sister.

Mavis was prompt to detect favouritism.

“There, you encourage him, you see!”

“Oh dear, you two. It’s six of one, and half a dozen of another. Now, who shall we ask? The Todds? I think we should. Very well, the Todds. How about the Jenkins?”

“Those kids! I haven’t seen the pavement sailor for some time. Has he done a bunk?”

“No dear, of course not! Wherever do you get such ideas from? Mr. Jenkins is away in France, where he goes to buy silk for his firm. Anyway, he has been most kind to you children, so has Mrs. Jenkins. I think we should ask them.”

“Mrs. ‘Sailor’s’ going to have a baby, don’t forget! Will the waggonette shake her up too much? Don’t forget you’ll be responsible if anything goes wrong.”

“Well dear, it is kind of you to be so considerate. But I think it will be quite all right. Now Mavis, would you like to ask anyone in particular? Oh, by the way, Aunt Liz and Polly and Percy Pickering will be here then! They are coming for a few days, before we go to Whitstable, and then going on to Dovercourt. I forgot to tell you, I heard this morning by the eleven o’clock post.”

“Oh good, good!”

The idea of Percy and Desmond with him immediately made the party desirable to Phillip. Thus encouraged, he wondered if he could ask Milton to come? And dare he ask Milton to suggest to the Rolls that they come too? He might ask Milton to sound them. He would seek Mother’s advice first. But
not before Mavis! She would be bound to laugh at him. He would ask Mother later, in private.

Looking intently at him, Mavis said, “Phillip’s thinking about Helena! I always know when he is, by the look on his face!”

“I am not, you are a liar!”

“Hush children, hush! I did think of asking them, but perhaps we do not know them well enough, Mavis. Mrs. Rolls and I exchanged cards years ago, but she did not seem to want to follow it up. They have their own set of friends, you see. But do ask them dear, if you like”.

Phillip’s face was deathly pale. Hetty gave Mavis a glance, frowning and shaking her head slightly, to tell her to leave Phillip alone. She knew how Phillip felt, and always wanted to save him from unhappiness. At times he was desperately unhappy, in periods of black depression which seriously alarmed her. As for his devotion to Helena Rolls, it was like something fixed in his mind; nothing could change it. He was a strange little person, feeling things much more than ordinary children did, rather as Dickie did, and herself too, in their differing ways. Could he have inherited both their temperaments, and this account for his waywardness, and seeming contradiction at times? Oh, she hoped he was not going to turn out an unhappy man, like his father. Those black moods of despair alarmed her. And she had never forgotten how, when he had set the Backfield on fire years before, his face had looked when he had gone white and strained, and said, in a voice of sad despair, “Mother! Do you think I ought to commit suicide?”

No invitation was sent to Mrs. Rolls, and the Misses Rolls.

The day of the picnic was intensely hot. The girls wore white frocks and big floppy hats, with sash-like ribbons on them, matching the ribbons round their waists. The boys were bare-legged in shorts and shirts, with cricketing hats and plimsolls. Hetty wore a dove-grey skirt, with a flounced blouse fastened high up her neck with invisible bones, which made her hold her head, supporting a large straw hat bearing a fluffage of ostrich feathers Charley had given her, upright with a suggestion of dignity, which was enhanced by her white kid gloves and parasol, but denied immediately her smiling, sensitive lips were seen. She was often near to tears as she thought of Mamma, yet sustained by the belief that Mamma was glad that she did not show her grief. It was the children who mattered.

The Todds had gone to the sea, and the Jenkins; it was a small party after all. It began sedately; everyone on best behaviour.

Mrs. Neville, speaking in her clear voice, which somehow seemed to make her fat body unapparent, remarked upon the exceptional heat. “It is curious, but do you know, Mrs. Pickering, as soon as I heard that Sunstar had won the Derby last June, I knew we were in for a real scorcher this summer!”

“Then you think that all such things fit in together, Mrs. Neville? It certainly looks like it, I must say,” replied Mrs. Pickering, determined to give the right answer to the rather grand manner of Mrs. Neville, and so show that, although she was from the country, she could hold her own with anybody of the town.

Aunt Liz’s small person was dressed in a home-made print bodice and skirt from which the half-bustle, of the previous century’s end, had been removed. Mrs. Neville had considered how to compliment Mrs. Pickering on that dress, but her mentally rehearsed remark appeared to be capable of being taken the wrong way. “How much more free and easy are the simple fashions of years ago than the present-day ones, which demand things like the hobble-skirt!” … so she fell back on the weather and topical subjects, as the brake turned with heavy trot into the High Street. Mrs. Neville tried another tack.

“I hear it is likely to be a vintage year for champagne, Mrs. Cakebread.” Then she remembered that Phillip had told her that his Uncle Sidney, who had died in the war, had been in the wine trade. Oh dear!

To cover this dropped brick, she said, upon seeing a woman standing on the pavement, selling copies of
The
Suffragette,
“Did you ever feel tempted to throw a brick through the window of the House of Commons, Mrs. Maddison? I must say I feel a good deal of sympathy with those who do! Fancy being forcibly fed in prison, through those horrible steel and rubber tubes! Did you read that food getting into the lungs caused one poor creature to develop septic pneumonia? They let her out in time, of course, not wanting her death at their door. Why, it was the same name as yourself,
no
relation of course!”

Seeing Hetty’s face, Mrs. Neville’s was filled with concern. “Oh dear, what have I been saying! I suppose that was the Aunt Phillip told me about, then! Oh, do forgive me, Mrs. Maddison, I had no idea! Very brave women they are, all of
them! But what a pity they have to go about it the way they do, antagonising the public, still … Oh dear me, what am I talking for like this,
do
forgive me, dear, I am such a silly person, it is the excitement I suppose, this is my first real jaunt since I was a girl!”

“Yes, I think it is mine, too, Mrs. Neville!” said Hetty, with a smile, as Mrs. Neville wiped away a tear with a small lace-edged square of cambric from one of her large round grey eyes.

The tear did the trick; it made the women feel at one with each other; and after that the brake seemed to be rattling along on the cobbles between the electric tram-lines as though the old days of care-free girlhood had come again. Seeing their mothers’ faces, the boys showed their peashooters openly, and small wrinkled seeds flew in all directions. Phillip had his catapult; the peas therefrom, half a dozen wrapped in thin lavatory paper, whizzed through the air to the puzzlement of straw-hatted butcher and fishmonger, already plagued by flies upon their near-tainted wares.

The picnic was a success, despite the close heat under the tall and spreading trees of the Park. Mist lay upon the leaden Thames below. The thermometer in the wall of the Observatory registered one hundred degrees Fahrenheit in the shade. Sparrows hopped for crumbs with gaping beaks. Ice melted in the lemonade too quickly, even so, the drink was too sweet. The picnic basket, delivered from a pastrycook in Tranquil Vale across the Heath, contained all sorts of delicious pies, rolls, cakes, and best of all, ice-creams flavoured with real raspberries.

In addition, Hetty had bought a box of various sweets, for the children. Some were old favourites of her own, from childhood days: the ones Mamma had given them all, Hughie and Charley, Dorrie and Joey, in faraway days. Among them were pink sugar mice, with string tails, pink sugar whistles, Cupid’s Whispers—heart-shaped flat sugary things with mottoes like
Be
Mine,
I
Love
You,
Always
True,
printed on them in colours; sherbet bags, pralines or satin cushions, Pumfret cakes of Spanish licorice (good for the bowels) and other sweets not very interesting to Phillip. But to Hetty they were—Mamma.

Phillip was happy with his two lieutenants, Percy and Desmond, and did not make one sarcastic remark to the girls during the entire day, Hetty noticed with smiling happiness. If only Dickie, cooped up in a stifling office, could be with them! It must be,
yes it was, eighteen years ago that she and Mamma, with Hughie driving the hired cob, had come all the way from Cross Aulton, to meet Dickie and Dora; and Dickie had proposed to her, over there, on that very seat near the tall, thick hawthorn trees, with the fallow deer grazing quietly beside them.

Poor Dickie—poor Hughie—poor Mamma—poor Dora. How Time altered people and places. There were no deer now—ah well, one must try and live for the children.

Mrs. Neville, resigned to the heat of the day and the tightness of her corsets, put out a hand, and touched Hetty on the wrist. A tear of sympathy stood in one of her own eyes. She knew, from the long intimate talks she had had with Phillip, more about the family than Hetty imagined. She said nothing; the tear, and the smile, said everything.